


Adagio

by blythechild



Category: V for Vendetta (2005)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-14
Updated: 2012-02-14
Packaged: 2017-10-31 04:46:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/340031
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blythechild/pseuds/blythechild
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>V is desperate to get some rest and admires how easily it comes to Evey.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Adagio

**Author's Note:**

> This story was written in response to a beautiful illustration by fellow V fan, Saniika. The illustration was inspired by Barber's Adagio, which despite being overused as dramatic movie music, is hauntingly beautiful.
> 
> This is a work of fanfiction and as such I do not claim ownership over any characters herein. It was created as a personal entertainment.

A glow spilled out into the hallway from Evey’s room. V strode over to her doorway silently – like always – to see if she was still awake or if she had fallen asleep while reading again. He hoped that she was still up, that he might be able to engage her in a meaningless conversation for a little while. Those brief moments eased the loneliness that he felt wandering the Gallery in the early hours while she slept: it felt just like it always had before she came.

_Before she came…_

He had never put a name to that aimless feeling, but now that he had companionship, he understood that the lack of it was defined as being lonely. V had been lonely for nearly 20 years and had never known it; he was not sure if that had been fortuitous or just plain pathetic. 

He reached her doorway and tapped lightly on the frame.

“Evey?” he said softly.

Nothing. He tapped again and whispered her name once more. It sounded strangely like a prayer to him. Still nothing. He pushed the door inward and peered through enough to see that she had fallen asleep, bedclothes akimbo, book discarded on the bedroom floor, her hair swirled about her head as if she were sleeping in water. She wore a curious expression on her face that he could only qualify as ‘concentrated peace’; as if she was trying very hard to get some rest. He found himself smiling at the notion: if only it was _that_ easy, he mused. If one could simply will peace to come, he wouldn’t be an insomniac, and he would banish his dreams of the past forever. If it was only a matter of will. 

He suddenly, fervently wished that it _was_ possible and that Evey could teach him this forced bliss. He admired her a great deal despite her insistence that she wasn’t very special: he felt that she was an object lesson for him. She was the embodiment of many things that he had forgotten: traditionally moral, decent, empathetic. And, on a very simple selfish level, he was overjoyed to have someone to talk to, to play-act for, to please with his most simple skills. Her mere indulgence in his eccentricities flattered and charmed him: he feared that his unused, naïve heart was falling for her. This was an impossible and impractical notion but he enjoyed the sensation nonetheless, thinking that this was the first and last time for him to experience this aspect of life. 

He walked slowly over to her bedside and crouched down to retrieve her book: _Damian_ by Hesse. Well, she’d _have_ to force some peace after such a ponderous read – he was always surprised by her choices. She was unpredictable in so many ways. He smiled a second time as he placed the book by her bedside and turned to watch her sleep. His hands rested on the coverlet that she had tossed about in her sleep and he fought to keep them there. He wanted to reach out to her and embrace the same stillness that she did. But it simply would not do to rouse her and try to explain that he wanted to curl up next to her purely out of a need for comfort and closeness. She was not a child; she would assume that he had _other_ intentions. If he was being truly honest with himself, he _did_ have those intentions as well, but the sense of peace that she instilled in him was far more compelling at the moment. Right now he wanted to lay next to her, close his eyes and listen to her breathe in the dark. Just that. No, it wasn’t exactly noble, but then again it wasn’t inherently lascivious either.

He satisfied himself with tracing a long tangle of her hair across her pillow, watching the contrast his dark, dull gloves made against her wavy highlights. After a moment, he sighed and rose, turning to find her abandoned blanket and gently spreading it out over her. She roused slightly as he tucked her under the warm folds of cloth and he made haste to turn out the light before consciousness settled on her, but the moment the light was out, he heard her voice.

“V?”

“Yes, Evey, I’m here.”

“What are you doing?” her voice was thick with sleep.

“You fell asleep reading again. I was just turning out the light.”

A moment of silence passed.

“Will you stay here?” she asked.

“I…well…no, of course not.”

“Oh.” She sounded disappointed. _Disappointed?_

Another moment of silence hung over them.

“Would you like me to stay?” He couldn’t believe that he had said it aloud.

“Yes, please.”

“Oh. Well then…”

He stood over her awkwardly, not knowing where to be or what to say next. But she took care of all that as he heard her moving across the mattress and then tapped it lightly.

“Lie down.”

 _Really?_ “Oh, I don’t…”

“Lie down.” She said again patiently.

He stood for a moment and then gingerly crawled onto the mattress, carefully staying as far from her as the surface would allow. He lay on his back rigid as a board thinking that this was the exact opposite of the peace and comfort that he had been hoping for. What a mess.

Her hands reached out and touched his shoulder and his wrist, as if to anchor him in the darkness. They traced the outline of his form quickly, trying to tell her what her eyes could not, and then, without any preamble, she scooted up behind him like a warm, solid brace. V’s breath came out in a loud, undignified rush as Evey’s arms crawled around his shoulders and she tried to pull him towards her.

“Sorry.” She whispered. “I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable. I thought that this might be pleasant for you.”

_Pleasant? How did she know what he was thinking about only minutes before?_

“Is it pleasant to you?” he asked, deflecting.

“Well, yes. I feel very…comfortable around you, V, but I know that you don’t like to be touched. I just thought…well, with you hanging around my bedroom most nights, maybe… I mean, it’s okay, you don’t have to stay…”

 _Hanging around?! Oh no…_ “Evey, I don’t want you to think that…my intentions are less than honorable. You need not make any concessions in order to please me or justify your stay here in any way.” V was starting to feel nauseous.

“I wasn’t thinking that.” She replied quickly. “I just think that being close to someone that you…like, and trust, is one of the nicest things about being a person, V. I thought that you might appreciate that too, but…I can aim quite wide of the mark sometimes, I guess.”

Evey pulled back. V suddenly felt cool air where a moment before her warmth had buttressed him and it almost felt like a wound. 

_This is your first and last chance at this. Decide._

V moved and shifted in the darkness. Without a word he came to rest against Evey just below her collarbones. Through the filters of the bedclothes and his wig and mask, V could feel the steady, strong rhythm of her heart. He remained very still where he lay and cleared his mind of whatever the nagging voices told him. Just the steady beat of her heart. Just the reassuring solidness of her. Just warmth in a place where he had always been cold, and nothing more. He sighed slowly and nuzzled further into her. In that moment, he no longer cared if his actions were appropriate or not; in a little over a half a year he would be dead. This tiny, crazed instant where he abandoned his physical hang-ups and desperately reached out to this girl that he barely knew in comfort and need seemed so good, so _right_ that he was willing to take the emotional risk that otherwise would have been intolerable to him. Evey felt like what the words ‘peace’ and ‘shelter’ would mean if they had a physical weight to them – these were things that he had no practical knowledge of, but the moment that he sunk into her softness and felt her heart beneath his ear, he understood the totality of what had been stripped from him 20 years ago. For a second he tried to imagine a lifetime of such closeness with another, and then he mourned the loss of what he never had to begin with.

Lost in his head, he was not paying attention to Evey’s reaction. The acceleration of her heart under him became a tactile sensation rather than an aural one. She did not move or say anything and it occurred to him that she might be afraid of what he would do next. He fought to find the right words to say – to somehow express the joy that he felt in this surrender – but he lacked the language for something that was so blisteringly new to him. 

_She’s probably expecting you to seduce her. She’s probably imagining a way to get through it. She doesn’t even know what you look like – this must be terrifying for her! Find some way to assure her, man! Find some way to comfort her…_

Comfort. Just as she comforted him. Perhaps words were not required after all. V reached up slowly and lightly ran the tips of his gloves along Evey’s arm; back and forth, over and over in circles and rhythmic patterns that became of form of meditation for him. Her heart slowed but remained strong under his ear. Her breathing lengthened and she sighed in a long, low rush that seemed to simultaneously make her whole frame beneath him soften. Something akin to a small purr escaped him, rumbling through his chest and reverberating backward into her. Evey let out another sigh as she adjusted her body around him so that he lay in the cradle made by her curved hips. One hand floated over him – a ghost sensed only by body heat – and landed gently on his chest. Her fingers mimicked his and began to trace swirls and meandering pathways across the fabric of his doublet, pricking and thrilling his hidden skin beneath with their proximity.

Evey’s fingers found the central seam of his coat and traced it from waist to collar and then back again. Even through the thick cloth he felt the soft pads of her fingertips and, occasionally, the harder curves of her half-moon nails when her hands changed direction. In the darkness he imagined what they looked like, their delicate, pale spears skimming across his bare chest. Would her skin be as soft as her body felt under him now? Or was it a trick of the senses – her smoothness translated to delicacy by a mind that had only experienced his own rough skin? And suddenly, he was aware that he was no longer imagining: her fingers were working their way through the seam to search him out beneath.

“Evey” he gasped, no more than a whisper.

Her fingers froze but she did not move or say anything.

“Evey” he tried again “Do you remember when I made you breakfast on that first morning after your arrival?”

“Yes.”

“Do you remember what my hands looked like?” The memory of her face in his mind was like an unsheathed blade.

“Yes. The burns – I remember, V.”

“Evey, my whole body is like that.” He said after a long, anguished pause.

Evey waited before responding. “Will it hurt?”

“Pardon?”

“Will my fingers hurt you, or would you simply prefer that I didn’t touch you?”

“Well, I’m sensitive but you won’t hurt me. The feel of me…might… _disgust_ you.”

Evey waited another long moment in the dark and then her fingers slipped quickly under his doublet and skimmed across the scar tissue of his chest. V gasped at her abruptness as well as the sensation. _She IS as soft as she looks!_ Another first: touching another person, skin-to-skin. Though he fought with the physical boundaries that struggled to re-assert themselves in this moment to protect him, V had to admit _feeling_ Evey for the first time – her heat, her movement – was the most intoxicating sensation that he had ever experienced. He wondered how he would restrain himself from touching her after this. _How do people LIVE with such distractions? This is simply remarkable!_

“Oh…” V murmured.

Evey’s fingers swirled as they had on his doublet, following scars and patches of his skin wherever they would lead her hand. V’s head swan with sensations that he could not find words for. He wanted to scream aloud, fall still as a stone, and grab her all at the same time: the contradictions were maddening. 

“You’re so warm, V. It’s kinda amazing…” Evey sounded breathless.

“ _You’re_ amazing…” he mumbled almost incoherently.

“Hardly. I can’t imagine how you found the strength to survive all this time, V. I could never be that strong. I could never be like you…”

“You never know what you are capable of until you are tested, Evey.”

“I _wish_ that I could believe that – that I could see opportunity in any situation, like you do. I’m not brave enough, V. I wish that I was.” Sadness coloured her voice but her fingers continued to stroke and soothe.

V’s mind snapped out of its delirium: he could _show her how to believe_ just as he had been shown. It was a monstrous idea, and he was not sure that he could do it – not now that he had gotten this close to her. The process might kill him. It would be ironic if ‘bettering’ Evey were the thing that consumed his last inch that he refused to abandon all those years ago. Was that something that he was willing to give up for this girl, this stranger? Without a second’s hesitation his heart said ‘yes’. The sacrifice was worth it. This girl who had so much to give – who had already given him what he never thought to ask for – he could give her the gift of strength, and then she would be whole. Free. _Perfect._

“You are so much more than you think you are, Evey. Some day you’ll see what I see in you. I promise.”

His mind suddenly felt clouded and his body heavy. With vague astonishment, V realized that he was drowsy. He felt that he should make his leave and go to his own room to take advantage of what little sleep was coming, but all he had the will to do was to keep stroking Evey’s bare arm and sink deeper into her chest. He turned his head, his wig splaying across her as her own hair had across her pillow, and his mask came to rest against her breast. He expected her to object but her body just curved around his more deeply and her hand settled inside his doublet. Another long sigh escaped her followed by a muffled yawn. V sighed in sympathy.

“Stay.” She murmured through another yawn. “Just like this.”

“I would like to…” he qualified.

“Then do.” She answered quickly as her other hand cradled his head against her.

Her heartbeat quickened again under his ear, and then slowed gradually as her breathing lengthened and he felt her fingers loosen on him. Before long she was adrift and he felt himself sharing in her peace, as he had originally wanted. Their arms snaking through and around each other formed the boundaries of their oasis: beyond them lay the things that would conspire against them in the weeks and months to come. They could wait until morning; they would still be there. Tonight she and he could indulge just this once.

“Just this once.” V mumbled before losing consciousness entirely.


End file.
